BY ETON THOMAS Etan Thomas is a poet and author who plays basketball for the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. He is a peace activist and actively supported Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. His website is http://etanthomas.com/

Donald Trump's most recent challenge to President Barack Obama took me back to my collegiate years at Syracuse University. I had studied for two weeks straight for a calculus class, harder than I had ever studied in my life. After I completed my exam, I was confident that all my hard work had paid off.

But the next day, my professor greeted me with accusations of cheating, saying three-fourths of the class had flunked. How could I possibly have managed to get a B minus without cheating? Thankfully, not all of my professors were cut from this same cloth, but I had my share of run-ins. One professor asked me on the first day what I was doing in his classroom, and shouldn't I be in remedial English or Rocks for Jocks?

Why did I have to prove myself worthy of being in their classrooms? The vast majority of professors at Syracuse University were not like this, but the sting of disrespect from those encounters has resonated with me till this day.

Donald Trump questioning the president's educational background took me back to those unfortunate memories.

President Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983 with a degree in political science. He went on to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. But apparently Trump is not impressed. He suggested -- without offering any proof of this baseless claim -- in an interview with The Associated Press that not only was he a poor student, he didn't deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended.

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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman